


Sugar in the Raw

by DeltaRaeRunAway



Category: Dancing with the Stars (US) RPF, Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, Maksyl, Read All About It, Rumba, Sappy, Sugary (I apologize for the pun...)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 20:37:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1578770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeltaRaeRunAway/pseuds/DeltaRaeRunAway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode numbers were trivialities and he didn’t know how many seasons he’d done at this point, because all that mattered was that this was *the* season. All the rest (had he dreamt them while he waited for her, a vision in pink?) didn’t mean anything now, because this was his season, his one and only. </p><p>She was his one and only.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sugar in the Raw

If last week’s costume had been a haphazard hit-or-miss, this Monday they had gone the opposite route altogether. In lieu of fishnet stockings, a black pleather bustier, and hair so frizzled it looked to have been electrocuted; Meryl donned an understated soft pink frock. It teetered on gauzy, but the gossamer fabric caressed her skin in ways that the television cameras couldn’t do justice, and she loved the fusion of ice princess and Hollywood star that it implied.

 

Maks didn’t exactly have any reservations either, making _sure_ to compliment her just so frequently that her cheeks blushed pink as the dress itself upon his whisper in her ear. He didn’t want to brag—but the dance, the rumba, that he’d choreographed for them that night was to be nothing shy of breathtaking. He couldn’t take all the credit, no, far from it—Meryl’s earnest spirit and the fact that she was so quick a learner made teaching her steps and sequences hardly a matter that had to be dealt with. Her passion, artistry, sheer ability…it was all there, from the start, blooming wider still as if to prove the last seventeen years of her life had not been in vain.

 

This dance, it was special. A perfect score behind them, Meryl and Maks were decidedly on to bigger and bolder things. It was one thing to achieve perfection, and another even grander thing to throw your expectations away like caution to the wind. The rumba, much like the salsa they previously performed, featured heavily the concept of sexuality. In the salsa, Meryl had exhibited her ability to ‘get down and dirty’, one of the many pied ways to exude sexuality. Now they experimented with another form of this abstraction—delving into mixed emotions, those aside from the shameless carnal ones of week seven. The result was sensual, a take on sexuality that the team found to be less gritty than unadulterated sex but much more intense, more real, and in that sense, more gritty, they supposed.

 

By nature, Meryl and Maks were storytellers. The dream in dance is to get across a phrase, a speech, a soliloquy, without words or verbalizations—just movements so vivid that physicality speaks the volumes that the dancer cannot. They wished to incorporate this into their rumba, and through creative collaboration were able to come up with a winning display of the side effects of love, from rage to total serenity. When Maks presented to her the gist of what he’d come up with, she didn’t squeal like she normally did when excited, but pulled him into a tight embrace and didn’t let go for days. Or was it months? Years? It was all the same for Maks; time stood still when he was with Meryl. Episode numbers were trivialities and he didn’t know how many seasons he’d done at this point, because all that mattered was that this was _the_ season. All the rest (had he dreamt them while he waited for her, a vision in pink?) didn’t mean anything now, because this was his season, his one and only.

 

She was his one and only.

 

Even the song lent to the power of the piece they were to dance. Upon Meryl’s first time hearing it, she cried, but she couldn’t determine why. It had been Derek who suggested it; actually, telling Maks that Amy had rejected it but if anybody should rightfully have it, it would be Meryl. Curious, he’d slid it into his car’s CD player and listened to the track on the way home from a charity benefit. He didn’t get the whole way through before texting her, “I have the song to end all songs. Bright and early tomorrow, you will see.” The receiving end of this message shuddered at he ambiguity of it all, and made sure to arrive the next morning a good half hour early, if only, she promised herself, to get a head start on sun salutations.

 

Practice came so easily that Maks had to wonder whether or not Meryl had been a ballerina in another life. He knew that grace and strength came with the figure skating as a package deal, but to this degree, he was unaware.

 

It had been her idea to slap him, but she revoked it as soon as he challenged her to try and she dropped her trembling hand down to her side and giggled nervously, unable to complete the task.

 

Maks knew what he had to do—this was art, and it needed to happen, stinging face or not.

 

So he berated her, pulling out all the stops and channeling the Maks that the media always made him out to be. A one-track-minded womanizer with a temper to match. She didn’t know what to make of this, what she was up against, and in the end his idea triumphed—so frustrated with his sudden swing in personality that when he offered the next time for her to try the slap she went for it with maybe a little too much force.

 

Shocked, she’d pulled back and looked him in the eyes. They filled with tears that did not spill out, but he looked satisfied. Smug, even. Instantly she’d felt guilt course through her veins, but now she wanted to smack him again. Where was her partner, and did he think they were going to be at the top with this level of communication?

 

He relented and told her his plan all along, to rile her up and evoke true anger from her. She thought it was genius, if bordering evil genius, but then she also thought that this was an excellent description of the Chmerkovskiy brothers and didn’t hesitate to deem them as such whenever the opportunity presented itself.

 

Looking back at the package the following Monday, it was clear to the couple that everything they put into this dance could not have been compressed and adequately displayed in the allotted 2 minutes each remaining pair on the show had.

 

Although, everything shown really had happened, even if it was just pieces of the puzzle and not nearly the whole story that composed the package. Editors and producers of reality television are often plagued with the reputation of putting words into peoples’ mouths just to stir up controversy, and admittedly, this reputation, like a stereotype, is not without some hard evidence, but Meryl and Maks had a chemistry that made things so easy on their editors and producers, because nothing needed to be cut and pasted or twisted into convoluted white lies. So this week, while the two would’ve liked a longer preface to their momentous rumba, at least they could truthfully claim that nothing in the package had been tampered with.

 

The tiny dresses she’d worn were supposed to innocently indicate the coming of summer, but they apparently served to indicate the torture of Maks. Did she really find it, oh, he didn’t know; _appropriate_ to show up to rehearsal with an itty-bitty sundress and expect him to focus? He bet she thought that was funny, and off camera, he told her so, and to his annoyance she laughed. Laughed at his plight, knowing very well that he couldn’t lay a hand on her while they were on set for fear of paparazzi bombardment.

 

And then she had the nerve to call him a teddy bear in front of all of America. Now, Maks quite liked the redeeming package that they were given last week, where he’d been called a jerk and took the name-calling as a compliment, smooth as can be. And it didn’t hurt either that he’d been shown, injured badly where the sun doesn’t shine, and barely sporting a grimace. Yes, it is safe to say that although Meryl was changing him for the better, he had a bit of an affinity for his bad-boy reputation.

 

Potentially this was payback—he had gone out of his way this week to showcase his rougher side with her. He wanted the world to see that she was so capable—not just some skinny little girl who he could snap like a twig but a force to be reckoned with. Maybe she liked her sweetheart image as much as he did his own? Whatever the teddy bear thing was, regardless, it was not cool, that was for sure.

 

“I think a lot of people think Maks is a little bit scary…he’s actually a big softy,” Meryl had divulged in her candid interview. Maks was seeing it for the first time on live TV and was not pleased.

 

“Really? Really, baby, really?”

 

She just smiled wryly and patted his hand with her own as she was so wont to do. “Don’t worry, there’s more.”

 

More, as it turned out, was banter between the two of them that he knew had been filmed but was not necessarily proud of.

 

“Just because a teddy bear is large doesn’t mean he’s scary.” Irked as he was, he couldn’t deny how adorable Meryl was as she started to come out of her shell with him on camera with actual _documented evidence_ of her confidence.   


“Did you just call me a teddy bear?” Arms crossed for emphasis on his masculinity.

 

“Yup.” She retaliated matter-of-factly. He almost took it up with her—almost—and then remembered that this would most likely be broadcast and abruptly sobered up.

 

“I’m not a teddy bear.”

 

“You are a _really_ big teddy bear.” She was still teasing him. Oh, she would not find it so funny when he let slip something about her…unfortunately for Maks, however, the picture of innocence cannot be forged and really, Meryl had nothing going against her, except maybe a photo or two of her asleep, drowning in her hair splayed all over herself, but that was more cute than blackmail-worthy.

 

Suddenly, the back-and-forth game they were playing took a sidestep to heavier topics.

 

“You know I’m not gonna impose my friendship on anyone, but with Meryl, I think it’s pretty clear that we’re gonna try to maintain whatever it is, that we have, going on, way after the show.” He made sure to allude to a romantic relationship, or at least one with more weight than your standard platonic, without giving too much away so that interested viewers would have to vote and ‘tune in’, if you will, for more information. It was their homage to the song choice that night, and to the fine folks who worked tirelessly to stalk celebrities without regard for boundaries or…stop, Maks. You’re getting carried away.

 

Then Meryl came on again, the package nearly over, reiterating how _special_ this dance was, for reasons she didn’t necessarily elaborate on.

 

“Vulnerable.” She described herself in the rumba.

 

“Maks and I are loving” (sure, her next words were without hesitation: ‘this routine’, but with the right click of a pause button, Maks could have his fantasies played out.)

 

And soon as they’d been announced, Meryl and Maks found themselves seated at a little table on the ballroom floor, various utensils strewn about, Maks contemplative and Meryl even more so squeezing her head in her hands. The first notes of the song rang out. The dance began.

 

She swept everything off the table in a fit of anger. He acted accordingly. He wanted to replace the table settings with her, her body, in that pink dress…but he acted.

 

She slapped his cheek. The crowd gasped.

 

He walked away, painstaking as it was. She followed briskly, grabbing his arm, lifting it up and nuzzling her head beneath his bicep so that his shoulder cradled her head.

 

She swayed around him, some times leading; others following suit.

 

He chased her; he guided her.

 

She twirled, thrust herself against him and held on for dear life. She crouched down and feigned fear. She rolled on the ground, curled up into the fetal position.

 

He helped her up, only to toss her back down again.

 

She let her hips take control as he held her face in his hands. Their noses touched, their breaths in sync.

 

Caught in the moment, he stayed in that particular hold for a little too long—nobody noticed but Meryl, and she smiled into his cheek, as her lips were pressed up against it.

 

She effortlessly swung her leg behind her into a needle scale and showed off the position as her hands clasped to his waist for support.

 

Together they finished in a tight embrace, something both contemporary and traditional as you can get.

 

And then, though the music had stopped, the magic manifested itself yet again and she lingered, allowing Maks the time to kiss the top of her head. When she ‘came up for air’ after the routine, the look on her face was not just of confidence but of that combined with pride because she _could not have been more proud_ of their rumba, and she was so happy in that moment, so content with existing in that continuum of time.

 

Utter joy was written on her face, and that in turn made Maks swell with emotions he couldn’t name. They fed off of one another, see, all this talk of magic, of something special, of unfolding something in one another—the pinnacle of these comments came to be right after a dance was completed and a story told.

 

And he was so high on his happiness that he picked her up bridal-style and carried her over to the judges’ table, her mouth wide open, because she had been rendered breathless.

 

For the first time that night, he wondered what the material of her costume was, and if they could get custom sheets in that fabric. The only thing, in that moment, that Maks desired more than Meryl wrapped in those pink filmy drapes was for them to have enough of that stuff to be both wrapped in it, just _living in the moment_.

 

[For the record, Maks was _so_ not a teddy bear. Ask his grandma; she’ll sing his praises for him.]

**Author's Note:**

> Hi and thanks for reading!
> 
> After seeing this episode I needed to process my feelings (because WHAT?!) in some way and this is what happened. I didn't adhere to a specific format nor did I go back and read what I'd written, so I hope it's of some logic.
> 
> Please do review if you are so inclined (nod to Meryl there and her pleas for votes) and additionally, if you've nothing to say about this story (which is perfectly all right), I'm curious to hear what other people thought about week eight, if the thoughts are more coherent than mine!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this jumbled cluster of words and feelings... :)


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